England.The earliest Parker reference was a Johannes
le Parquier or Parcar from Normandy who died in England around 1136.His family line continued in Yorkshire.

One Parker family has traced their ancestry back
to the 13th century when they were park keepers to John of Gaunt in the
Forest
of Bowland in Lancashire. They appeared in the Ribble valley in
the 15th
century, first at Horrocksford and then at Brownsholme.The Parkers were Bowbearers of the Forest of
Bowland during the 17th and 18th centuries.Their home of Brownsholme Hall, still with the
Parker family, is
the oldest
surviving family home in Lancashire.

Robert
Parker, born in the Forest of Bowland in the early 1700's, moved across
the
Pennines to Halifax where he became a well-known local lawyer.
His home
in Halifax was Clare Hall.

Another
early Parker family was ofBulwell
and Norton Leesand dated back to the early 14th
century. A branch of this family subsequently moved to Park Hall
in
Staffordshire and prospered in the legal profession:
Another early
Parker family was to be found at Bulwell in Nottinghamshire in the 14th
century
and later at Norton Lees on the Derbyshire/Yorkshire border. A
branch of
this family subsequently moved to Park Hall in Staffordshire and
prospered in
the legal profession:

Baron
Parker of
Macclesfield became Lord Chancellor in 1718 but was convicted of
corruption and
ended his life in a debtor's prison.

a
later Parker of the family, William Parker, joined the Navy and was
Commander
of the British Mediterranean fleet in the 1840ís.

Southern
outposts at that time were Morley in Norfolk, Great Burstead in Essex,
Tenterden in Kent, and North Molton in Devon.The Parker line from Morley included Matthew Parker, Archbishop
of
Canterbury
from 1559 to 1575, and supposedly Robert Parker, better known in
America as the
outlaw Butch Cassidy.

The Parker
distribution by the 19th
century still showed very much a northern bias.
Ireland.Parkers in Ireland were
generally of English
origin.

An early arrival was John Parker
from Kent, appointed constable of Dublin castle in 1543.Captain John Parker from Devon was granted
land in Tipperary in 1667.His
descendants,
based at Castlelough, had become extensive landowners in the county by
the 19th
century.Michael Parker came to Ireland
with King Williamís army in the 1690ís.His descendants were Cork merchants.

America. Family tradition has
it that three brothers Ė Abraham, James,
and Thomas Ė came to New England in the 1630ís and settled in three
different
places, Chelmsford, Groton, and Reading. These Parkers may have
been
related, but it is doubtful if they were all brothers. James Parker made his mark in
Groton,
Massachusetts.One line from Thomas
Parker led to the hunter Nathaniel Parker, an early settler in West
Virginia
and then in Tennessee.
Other early Parker arrivals in New England
included:

another
Thomas Parker, the son
of a Puritan clergyman, who founded the town of Newbury, Massachusetts
in 1635.He died childless.

the brothers
Joseph and Nathan Parker, who were in Newbury by 1642 and later moved
to
Andover.

George
Parker, a carpenter who had
come to Rhode Island in 1638 (the year he was put in the stocks there
for
drunkenness).He was resident in
Portsmouth until his death in 1656.

William
Parker, who was one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut.He later settled in Saybrook.

and
two brothers Elisha and Robert Parker who were at Barnstable
on Cape Cod by the 1650ís.

William
Parker married without approval the daughter of the Earl of
Derby in 1703 and they fled to Portsmouth, New Hampshire soon
after.Many of their descendants were
clergymen,
including Samuel Parker who was appointed an Episcopal Bishop in 1804.

John Parker, born in Baltimore in 1758, was a famous frontier
Ranger and early settler in Texas. He was immortalized in death
when he was killed by Comanche Indians in the Fort Parker massacre of
1836. It was his granddaughter Cynthia who was taken and adopted
by the Comanches and her son Quanah Parker who was to lead the tribe at
their Oklahoma reservation.

Canada. Benjamin
Parker, a mariner and fish merchant, left Cape Cod in Massachusetts for
Liverpool, Nova Scotia in the 1750ís.His
eldest son Snow
Parker was to prosper there in trading, shipbuilding
and
privateering, which was to make him an extremely wealthy man.

Another Benjamin
Parker, this time from New Jersey, came to New Brunswick in 1783
together with
other Parker relatives.Some of them
settled on Campobello island.Others
moved to Nova Scotia.Many became
fishermen.These Parkers had come from
the Elisha Parker Cape Cod line.

Select
Parker Miscellany

If you would like to read more, click on the miscellany page for
further stories and accounts:

Matthew Parker was Archbishop of Canterbury in 1559 and a leader
of Anglican thought in his time. He was called "Nosey Parker"
because he kept poking his nose into matters that should not concern
him.Quanah Parker was
in the 1870's the last of the Comanche war chiefs.George and Charles Parker
founded their board game company Parker Brothers in 1888.
Their best-known game was Monopoly which
came out during the Depression. In the same year of 1888 another
George Parker founded the Parker Pen Company.Dorothy
Parker, born Dorothy Rothschild, was an American writer and
critic noted for her acerbic wit, associated with The New Yorker and the Algonquin Round
Table.Bonnie Parker was the
Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde, the 1930's outlaws later portrayed in film.Charlie Parker was the great
jazz saxophonist, a founder of be-bop in the 1940's.Alan Parker is a British film
director.Select Parkers Today